Last year, one of us, Peter, was applying for teaching positions. I was at the end of a three-year teaching postdoc at the University of British Columbia and was searching for my next step. The previous year, I’d applied to three teaching roles and secured interviews for two of them but unfortunately didn’t make the short list for either one. Based on my interview outcomes, I realized I needed a new preparation strategy to succeed in my job search.
I reached out for help from my friend (and co-author on this piece) Dinuka, who was a career coach and leader at another institution in British Columbia. In my final search year, I applied to around 40 positions, landed 12 Zoom interviews and eight short-list interviews, and received five offers: three permanent teaching roles and two three-year positions.
This is what I learned about how to prepare for the various stages of a teaching-track interview.
Prepare More Than You Think
In my first application cycle, I was confident in my preparation. I reread my application package, thought about the highlights I wanted to touch on in the interview and prepared answers for some standard questions. What I missed, and what Dinuka really helped me to understand, was that I needed to actually practice the act of answering interview questions.
During an interview, ideally every answer you give includes a concrete example of something you have done already, and how this concrete example relates back to the question. For example, if the interviewer asks, “How do you teach a class with students from a diversity of backgrounds?” (a common question), you should have a specific example of a previous success that relates to your answer. You can first answer broadly, but then need to tie your answer to a specific experience and demonstrate how it relates back to the question. This is a necessary skill, and it takes practice. As Dinuka explained to me, abstract claims are forgettable, but specific stories are memorable. Your job in an interview is to anchor every answer to evidence.
Dinuka helped me pick out some specific parts of my application that could be used for a variety of different questions. For example, I had revamped a course to use mastery grading, a form of grading where students need to demonstrate mastery of the material to receive credit but can take multiple attempts if they do not demonstrate mastery the first time. I wanted to use mastery grading because the literature suggests this framework can lower test anxiety in a large class, and at the end of the term I chose to give my students a validated test anxiety survey to see if these reductions held true. I indeed found similar reductions in test anxiety, but the students’ grades also ended up higher than expected.
Now I was able to incorporate this specific example of mastery grading into a variety of interview answers. It could be an example of something innovative I tried to improve the student experience in my classroom. It could be an example of something I’ve implemented to teach students from a variety of backgrounds (there’s some evidence that mastery grading reduces some equity gaps). It could be an example of how I adjusted a course based on student feedback (many students said that the course would benefit from a small cumulative final exam, so I added one the following term). Before my first interview, I went through my application package and pulled out a few key experiences that I wanted to highlight and put them on sticky notes in front of my computer to act as real-time reminders of my successes.
Practice Answering Questions
Once you have a few key experiences to highlight, practice actually answering questions in real time. Before my first interview, Dinuka and I met up to simulate an interview. He asked me a variety of interview questions, and I had to answer them succinctly and on the spot. We recorded the entire experience to analyze areas where I could improve.
While watching or listening to a recording of yourself can be an emotionally painful experience, it’s also a quick method for identifying any unconscious behaviors and any questions you stumbled on. Dinuka told me he was listening for two things: whether I could answer a question in under two minutes while still including a concrete example, and whether my answers reinforced a consistent narrative about who I am as an educator. After analyzing the recording, we repeated the process again and again until I was confident in my ability to answer questions succinctly while still highlighting key experiences. Dinuka also helped me practice with an AI interview tool called InStage, which would generate interview questions based on my application package as well as the job description. In the end, I probably ran through 20 practice interviews before my first Zoom interview.
The View From the Other Side
I definitely believe that my preparation for the Zoom interviews helped me land on the short list for on-campus visits. And now that I’ve been on the interviewer side, I’ve clearly seen the impact of preparation. I’ve seen the rank order of the candidates change significantly after both the Zoom and in-person interviews, often resulting in a drastically different ranking then what we’d reach simply from reading the applications. It’s possible to be ranked near the bottom of the candidates on the long list and then near the top of the candidates on the short list. Preparation for the interview matters as much as your CV, and maybe more.
Dinuka pointed out something worth sitting with: If rankings shift that much based on interview performance, it means the system is more responsive to preparation than candidates often assume. That’s empowering. Preparation is a skill that can be developed. While the interviewee has no control over many aspects of the job application process, such as who applies, what the committee is looking for and how many people are selected to the short list, one crucial factor they can always control is their level of preparation.
The Work Isn’t Over
Even though I received three permanent teaching position offers at amazing institutions, for a variety of reasons I decided to take another three-year position that I believe will help me grow even more as an educator and a scholar. Which means that soon I’ll have to prepare again for interviews—and when I do, I’ll make sure to prepare extensively.
A few questions worth asking yourself as you prepare:
- Have you identified specific experiences that can anchor responses to multiple types of interview questions?
- Have you practiced answering questions out loud, in real time, not just in your head?
- Have you recorded yourself and reviewed the footage, no matter how uncomfortable that feels?
- Is your application package coherent, or are there gaps that might make a committee wonder what you’re not telling them?
Preparation isn’t luck. It’s something you can start right now.
Peter Harrington is a lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at Yale University.
Dinuka Gunaratne (he/him) has worked across several postsecondary institutions in Canada and the U.S. and holds leadership roles with Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada, CERIC–Advancing Career Development in Canada, and the Administrators in Graduate and Professional Student Services knowledge community with NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. He is a member of the Graduate Career Consortium, an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.
